- [Brian] Hoo, doggy, I tell you what.
What a beautiful clutch!
This is actually a Chocolate Spinner Lesser.
What a beautiful snake that is right there!
Of course, a beautiful clutch of eggs.
I live for breeding snakes and getting eggs.
And that's the whole thing:
Why do I breed snakes?
♪Python eggs and python eggs... ♪
But before we get into that, what do you say
we set up an egg box, and get this clutch pulled?
(funky music)
And by the way, this is the male it was bred to.
This is actually a Banana Super Chocolate.
Whew. That is one beautiful snake.
So everything in this clutch is going to be chocolate,
and there's going to be all kinds of different Banana stuff
Lesser stuff, Spider stuff, Pinstripe stuff,
all kinds of cool things.
Let's go ahead and get these eggs.
I tell you what, this girl produced some really
beautiful babies last year.
So when she ovulated, I was super excited.
And the fact that we're able to breed her
to that Banana Super Chocolate is even better.
I mean, just look at that animal altogether.
Again, she's Chocolate, she's Lesser,
she's Spider, and she's Pinstriped,
then she's bred to that Banana Super Chocolate.
Oh, my gosh.
Look at these eggs here, they look good.
It looks like one little tiny slug.
And if you notice the last few clutches we've had,
I think four or five clutches, there's been no slugs.
So the fertility has definitely improved.
Now these are a little bit dimpled, and that just means
that they've dried out just a little bit.
And one of the reasons that might've been, as you noticed,
she wasn't coiled super tightly around them, right?
And that tight coil is what basically retains all
of the humidity with these eggs.
I'm going to actually candle these eggs too,
just cause they're a little bit loose,
and I wanna make 100% sure that the embryo is up on the top.
Remember they actually form an air bubble
on the top, and they breathe through that air bubble.
So we don't want that air bubble to be on the bottom
'cause of course that little baby embryo snake can drown.
But mama, you did so good.
We'll get her all cleaned up, we'll get her cage cleaned up.
We ended up having two, four, six,
seven beautiful eggs and one slug.
Not bad. Let's candle these eggs up and get on with it.
Hit the lights.
And again, what I'm doing is I'm just looking
for that air bubble and the little tiny baby snake,
and putting it at the top of the egg itself.
Again, these are a little bit desiccated
which makes finding the embryo a little bit harder.
And that's just, again, because she didn't actually coil
the entire clutch.
But all in all, it looks like we didn't have too many spin.
It's got little tiny spots where it's out,
but for the most part, she's looking pretty good.
So for those of you are counting, that's 14 clutches down.
We have a lot to go.
I'm super excited about it.
And yeah, this is part of the Barney Ball project
that didn't turn out the way I really want it to,
but hey, it's still part of the Barney Ball project.
And I tell you what, I have just my entire life
loved breeding snakes.
And of course, as a snake breeder, what do you want to see?
You want to see snakes breeding,
and then ultimately you want to see eggs
because that is really the true success of breeding.
And of course, this is just a beautiful corn snake
that is het for snow.
The snow is albino and anerythristic.
And basically this is the daddy right here,
just kind of a white pinkish snake with pink eyes.
Again, it's anerythristic and albino,
so it's a double recessive, basically pulling the red out
and pulling the black out, making kind of that white snake.
And this, of course, is a double het for both of those,
has just a small clutch of eggs right here.
I'm actually going to pull these two eggs out really quick
and put them right here just because I know as I'm pulling
these eggs out, she's going to probably flop them around.
So I'm going to pull these out here, too.
Come on, mama.
Let me go.
Come on baby girl.
So let's go ahead, get these out.
The good news is this is the second clutch of the year
for colubrids, and they're all fertile.
Again, not a very big clutch.
Look at how good she looks, though.
The thing is, is that as a colubrid lays a larger clutch,
it expends more energy, and it's harder for her
to rebound to potentially produce a second clutch.
Because again, colubrids will produce two clutches per year.
So this girl looks great.
She'll probably eat in the next few days and get ready
to breed again, and I have no doubt
that she's going to actually produce a second clutch.
We'll clean her cage up, get her all ready to go,
and get her cycled for the next breeding.
And then we've got two, four, six, eight beautiful eggs.
Now again, breeding a snow to a double het,
you basically end up getting one-in-four odds
on all of the things, so we can produce snows,
we can produce albinos, we can produce blacks.
And of course we can produce double hets,
and they'll all be het for snow because the dad was a snow.
So that's pretty cool.
Hey, I love the fact that we are getting more eggs.
And that brings me back to that question.
Why do I love breeding snakes so much?
We need you to join the reptile army
because we need soldiers to go out there
and actually spread the word about how amazing reptiles are
to your local people, to the state, to the community,
and to the nation, and even to the world.
So right now, you need to join the reptile army.
You can do that by going to reptilearmy.com,
pick your cool piece of merch, and then talk
to other people about how amazing these animals are.
We need you, so go ahead and enlist in the reptile army.
And you have to remember that I started breeding snakes
when I was 15 years old, so my whole life has been
breeding snakes, and it's so exciting.
And although that's the only clutch of colubrid eggs
we have, we have this Mexican Black King snake.
Look at how gorgeous this mama is.
She's in her nest box right here.
And this is just damp sphagnum moss, so it just basically
simulates what them laying in the base of a tree
or rotting roots or something around that line.
So this girl is due to lay any day now.
And it's just so exciting to come down every single day
and start opening up the box.
And of course, these are lay tags that tell us
when we're actually expecting the eggs.
Again, this Mosaic Cal King isn't in her nest box yet,
but you can see how loaded up with eggs she is.
I mean, look at this girl right here.
Of course, that's a designer, polygenic
California King snake.
And what we do is we'll always leave the shed skin in here
just so we understand that that actually is needing
a nest box and so on like that.
And then take a look at this.
This here is actually a Lavender that is het for snow
bred to a Lavender Snow Cal, and look at how spread she is.
You can almost see the eggs through the skin.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
And these girls should all be laying here
in the next couple days.
And like I said, you know, since I was a kid,
this is what I've done.
So this time of the year, right now,
is what I've been the most excited about
because you work all year to produce these snakes,
and you take care of them, you clean them, you feed them,
you condition them for breeding.
And then now, you get the fruits of your labor,
and that's snake eggs.
- Stop, it's embarrassing.
I just don't understand why we put the world's biggest,
heaviest bin on this thing in the dumbest room possible.
(delightful music)
I think it'll fit.
Okay.
This is why we need my strength.
Oh, you know what I just thought about?
For real though, Night Fury doesn't even need this big bin.
Oh, my God.
Now I broke it. No!
I think I broke it.
Okay. We're just going to leave that for today.
We're good now. Good to go.
Step over this.
Night Fury's shut out.
I guess Brian asked me to do this.
Here we go.
- [Brian] Nick, did you break my bin?
There's one thing in this shop that I love more
than anything, and it's my bin.
- Okay. Well, first off the bin is
at the highest part in this whole place, and it's huge.
Secondly, the bin was already broken.
- It wasn't broken yesterday.
- It's broken now.
- He broke my bin. I've had that bin since I was a-
- I actually already-
- [Brian] I used to have my crib in that bin.
- I believed that.
- My crib was in that bin.
- It's fine. I quit.
- [Brian] My mom bought that-
- I quit, so it doesn't matter.
- [Brian] Okay. No, you can't quit. You can't quit.
It's not allowed.
Yes. I went through, and we had one clutch right here.
It was actually this female right here, which by the way
I need dots, and I need an egg book and stuff like that.
- Then go get it.
- It's your colubrid.
- You wanna do the job, do the job.
- I pulled the eggs because
the people down below said I should pull the eggs.
- No, that's not what they said.
I actually read the comments on that one,
and that's not what they said.
- Well, then you should've got here early.
I was here early.
(Brian stammering)
What did I do wrong?
What are you looking at me like I did something wrong?
- Yeah, you did do something wrong.
- [Brian] What did I do?
- You know what? Finish the job.
Go spot clean through everything, mark everything,
- No, no, no, no.
- No, if you're doing the job, do the job, the whole job.
- No, no, no, you don't understand. I pull eggs.
- No, I do understand.
- [Brian] That's-
- If you're going to do the job, you're doing the whole job.
- [Brian] Okay.
- So now you get to spot clean all this.
- No! Lori, I'm busy. I've got things to do.
- I'm busy, too.
- I'm filming.
- [Lori] You did that, finish it.
- [Brian] I gotta go.
- Finish the job.
- Again, it's almost like you're
on a little treasure hunt, right?
Every time you open up the cage, you don't know.
Now unfortunately, I see that this snake is
out of its egg box here.
So this is actually an Apricot Pueblan Milk snake
and absolutely gorgeous.
I'm just going to take a peek, just to make sure
she hasn't laid.
Nope. She hasn't laid, so she's definitely ready to go.
I could tell she's kind of still swollen up,
but every time you open up that top,
just like this right here, you don't know.
Are you going see eggs?
Oh nope, the female, but look at how big.
See right here, that distension in her body?
That's all of the eggs.
And again, it's just so exciting to be able to open up a box
and not know if you see those pearly whites.
It's been driving me my whole life, and you know what?
It doesn't get old, no matter how many clutches
and I have produced tens of thousands
of clutches of snake eggs.
I never get sick of it.
I never get sick of that kind of look and I can see
the tail is kind of upright here.
I don't know if she's laying, so I'm just gonna kind of
slowly- oh! She's coming up.
This is actually a Brooks King snake right here.
And oh, my God, she's a beauty.
And again, she's going to lay any day.
It looks like we only got one clutch of snake eggs today,
but man, I tell you what I love breeding snakes.
You know, whether it's breeding Ball pythons
spotted pythons, colubrid snakes,
you know, it's always exciting.
But one of the things I get the most excited about
is stuff like the rainbow boas.
This is actually a Leucistic Colombian Rainbow boa
right here, and this is our boy that's done a lot
of breeding this year.
And then this girl here is actually a het Leucistic.
And you can see she is loaded up.
Now, what's cool about the boas, as well as the skinks
of course, is that you have live young, right?
So one day I'm going to come down here,
I'm going to open up this tub, and instead of finding
a clutch of eggs that's super exciting,
I actually will find a bunch of little babies.
And some of them will be white babies,
and some of them will be het for white babies.
That is pretty darn exciting.
I just get excited about breeding all reptiles.
I mean, they are all unique in their own way.
And this girl is actually due to lay eggs literally
any day now.
And of course, a lot of Ball pythons are due
over the next couple of weeks.
It's going to be exciting.
And the fact is is that I love breeding snakes
just because I love everything about it.
You know, it's something I've done my entire life.
The science behind it, the life behind it, the fact
that you know that all the work that you're putting
into it ultimately results in a bunch of living animals
and that you get to see those animals hatch out of the eggs,
take their first breath, be the first thing that they see,
I mean, it is an incredible thing.
I used to breed snakes for a living.
That's what paid my bills.
Now over the last several years,
I don't even take a paycheck.
Lori doesn't even take a paycheck from BHB.
We do it just because we love it,
and we're so passionate about it.
And we know that we can grow other people
into loving reptiles.
And that's why I continue to breed snakes,
even though it's not my really income anymore.
I still love every absolute part of it.
And I think it's just so wonderful.
So I can't imagine a day when I'm not breeding snakes.
I hope I'm 95 years old and still hatching a
cool Ball python or hatching a cool corn snake
or producing a clutch of boas
because that would mean that I've had an amazing life.
I hope that you guys enjoyed today's video.
If you did, here's a playlist of breeding snakes,
eggs and all that other stuff.
On this side you can subscribe to this channel.
I really do appreciate it.
Have an absolutely wonderful day, reptile army.
Remember, be kind to somebody.
And I promise I'll see you tomorrow.